Petersen Automotive Museum

This guide to the Petersen Automotive Museum follows Robert Petersen from a mechanic's kid in East Los Angeles to publishing magnate, after five thousand copies of a new magazine called Hot Rod sold out at a car show in 1947 and grew into an empire. It traces the personal loss that shaped him, and why in 1994 he chose a nearly windowless former department store on Wilshire Boulevard to house the cars he loved. He picked that building on purpose, since no windows meant no sunlight to fade the paint on the cars inside.